It is somewhat of a surprise to me. However considering Jay Wilson's recent comments it is less so. But I am still surprised and this is a real change to the game. Real change requires bold action. This is a bold action. I want to see how many of us here that are still active like this decision and how many who are not still active have thoughts on it. Here are some questions for discussion:

Is this a surprise to you?
How does this change your game?
Is this admitting any kind of defeat?
Will they pump item drops at all?
Will you use our trading forums here?
How will item valuation be decided initially? Just whatever someone will pay?
Will the currency be in game gold?

- Im not playing d3 anymore, havent played for some months now and I dont think ill play d3 ever again.

In my opinion the AH made flipping items quite lucrative if you had the knowledge. And quite easy to do quickly. This turned the item game into an ah-game. Not a grinding game.
In d2 it was also possible to get rich by trading / flipping items, but noone ever complained about that. To some players trading and being a good trader was an important part of D2. In d2 you where often conducting trades while farming,(at least i was) waiting for whispers or mail replies regarding trades .
- IMO a player controlled economy is more fun than a designer controlled economy.
Besides im sure itll help sites like this (incgamers), since trade activity will increase when the ah disappears.

However, i dont like the skill system (no char is unique, the only difference is level and items...) , the damage system (spell damage depends on how big your axe is..????) or the level system (from level 1 to 60 in no time, and then paragon lvl..)

But what i think is my biggest issue with the game, is the ecomony from the perspective of stability vs droprates.
- Blizzard stated before the launch of d3 that they wanted a stable economy, e.i. no ladder reset.
Without an occasional economy reset, the best traders will either become insanely rich, or: the non-traders (solo players) will become extremely poor. I dont se any way the droprates could satisfy both a casual solo player and an active grinder/trader in the long run. Either the solo player will have no way of completing game, or the grinder will have it way too easy to enjoy it.

So either theyll need to implement a ladder system or patch in ways that would reset at least parts of the ecomony (The later is something i wouldnt like at all as a player, since my items worth would be ensured to drop with each new patch)...
Or the game will suffer from an imbalanced (but stable) ecomony...

Regardless, i dont think ill play d3 again, but i do enjoy the debate hehe

Yeah, you know those self-found guys are really all sorts of ultra-dudebro-hardcore and routinely facerolling MP10.

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You do know there are other communities of D3 players out there besides this one? Shock horror, some of them are not even in internet communities. How many copies of D3 have sold? How many people are regular posters here? Is there a unanimous feeling even within this community that the AH and/or RMAH should be shut down? A vocal minority scream continuously that the AH is ruining THEIR experience of the game and demanding it be changed. The game was sold with this feature and many people expect it to be there. What of their experience of the game? Oh, that's right, "me first" rules, doesn't it? I am ambivalent about AH, I may have used it a dozen times, but it is a part of the game, whether you, or anyone else, likes it or not.

In my opinion, the Auction House is too important a feature to just remove. It makes trading much easier and more streamlined than it ever was in D2. The real issue with the auction house is that the item system is crap. There are not enough modifiers that are worth anything that making the trading process streamlined caused more harm than good. Since there are only a few modifiers worth anything the piece of crap chat would work just fine, that is if you could chat with more than a few thousand players at once. The Auction House would really shine if there was a solid mix of crappy<good<godly items, as opposed to the mediocre mix of crappy>godly items.

Kris, if you think about it, with the D3 console version coming out, which will have no AH, it becomes likely FAR more profitable for them to NOT resolve the issue for the PC version. Think about it: All they have to do is include some rudimentary PVP deathmatch in the console version, and not have the AH, and they can say "Look, for those of you who dislike the AH, or want PVP deathmatch, the console version is here! Just spend another $60 and this experience can be yours!"

You can say they will lose sales in the long run by doing so, but that just hasn't born itself out. D3 sold over 12 million copies. With 4 million coming in the first month, after server issues were resolved (to some extent), after the market had dried out enough to where bots can't have accounted for more than a couple of million of those sales, and most importantly after the reviews had a chance to review the full game (which was met with rampant critical acclaim, even as the user scores told a different story), they sold twice as many copies throughout the rest of the year. The fact is, no one really bears a grudge against Blizzard currently, except a select few individuals, who don't have enough impact to matter to anyone. A console version, bearing the missing features and sans auction house, would likely be met with still more critical success, would sell easily a few million copies, and most importantly, would not further stress their servers, as almost certainly the console version will be without the online only requirement.

For the PC version, low retention is good for them. The fewer servers they need to keep up to support the game, the better, as they aren't getting any money (other than from the auction house) following the initial box sales. Once the console version comes out, no one in the general populace or media will remember (or care) that Blizzard insisted it wasn't possible to make the game work offline, and the console version does exactly that. No one will remember or care that PVP was promised for PC 2 years before release, and console version has it first. No one will remember or care about people complaining Rampantly that the terrible UI, lack of weapon swap, and artificially low limitation on number of active skills was clearly due to a intended future console port, something fiercely denied by Blizz at the time. No one will remember or care about anything other than Blizzard PR's declaration that there were a vocal minority who had issues with some of the features of D3, and the console version should provide an experience more to the satisfaction of those individuals, as well as allowing Blizzard to reach a new market segment with their products.

So, if you're Blizzard, what do you do? Do you try to fix all the issues with the experiment (and hugely successful one at that) with always online DRM, real money transactions, and blatantly ignoring the desires of their consumer base which was D3? Do you then try to lure back individuals who have moved on to other games, a fact which is to your benefit? Or do you release basically the exact same product, just without the features fans were raging about years before the game released, and pocket another $600 million from sales of your product to the exact same individuals who already bought it for the PC?

The fact is, if / when the option for not having access to the AH appears, I expect it to be as a feature of the expansion, for the exact same reason. Release schedule looks like this: Release D3, sell 10+ million copies. Release D3 console, sell 10+ million copies. Release expansion which includes features already present on the console version, and fixes issues which never needed to exist at all, as well as raises the level cap (to make worthless all the items people have acquired) and introduces new items for people to go after, sell 10+ million copies. You may think I'm just bitter and cynical, but that's just the reality of the situation as I see it. Give it a year, and when the release of the console version is imminent (I expect it to come out almost exactly 2 years after the release of D3, with the expansion coming a year after that), we'll see how much of my predictions have come true.

If I was Blizzard, I wouldn't act in such a predictable manner, but that makes it an interesting strategy again ..

Your cynism isn't one about Blizzard, but about how companies are generally making decisions. I understand why managers often take more care about short-term goals and less about long-term effects. In a few years they will be elsewhere, so they drive the Titanic at full speed while they will already be elsewhere when it hits an iceberg, with the new captain receiving all of the blame.

If only we could go back to the 'sloppy' WUG trading from D2. But that can't happen due to the simple fact that itemization/builds doesn't exist in D3.

Everyone wants the same thing. Hence, trading would be alot easier in D3. Since 99.9% of everything is garbage.

On topic. AH was one of the key elements that made D3 a failure game play wise. It promoted easy access to end game items for a price and was proud of it. Dummys of all shapes and sizes bought into this concept. Forgetting that a ARPG is about the grind not about credit cards.

People bought into. "Durrh, i don't have time to PLAY THE GAME, so il just buy the best gear".. A few days later.... "IM BORED". Hook, line and sinker.

As far as the AH shutting down goes. I just think Blizzard is no longer making money off it and its too costly to maintain.

As far as the AH shutting down goes. I just think Blizzard is no longer making money off it and its too costly to maintain.

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That was my thought on why they are not adding a web version like WoW has. See Saturday's news item. Or an Armory that you can view auctions and buy/sell items via a phone app. I think their revenue is too low to support that and they don't want to spend the money on it right now. Not to mention the fact that they have a lot of other things to worry about on D3.

Don't care much about the AH itself. Never used it, don't have a problem with people that do. What I do have a problem with is Blizzard letting the AH dictate drop rates which means it affected in a significant way even those that wanted to opt out. They should return drop rates to D2's level. Whether they do that in the current economy or implement a new one is not all that important, just let everybody play the game the way they want, including people that want nothing to do with the AH.

As for the reasons behind shutting it down, I am quite certain no matter how much it ****s the game up, Activision would never let them do it as long as it returns any kind of profit, so it probably has to do with server maintenance costs. I wonder however: are they allowed to axe it just like that? The AH is an integral part of the game and was advertised as such for the PC version from the beginning. I am sure according to the EULA Blizzard is allowed to do as they please including taking our first born child, but we know that document has its legal limitations in court.